Looks Like 'Suicide Squad' Won't Be Coming to China

It’s looking increasingly unlikely that Suicide Squad, the new DC comics blockbuster from Warner Bros, will be coming to Chinese cinema screens.

The film has yet to be given a release date from China Film Group, which normally doles them out a couple of months in advance. 

The powers that be haven’t gone into a lot of detail about why the film hasn’t passed muster, with one insider telling The Hollywood Reporter that it's simply “not a good film to release in China." 

The blockbuster, starring Will Smith, Jared Leto, and Margot Robbie (recently in Beijing), was hailed as DC’s next great hope after Batman v Superman was critically derided.

Early reviews for Suicide Squad have been so dire that die-hard DC comics fans have been petitioning to have movie review site Rotten Tomatoes where it currently sits on a woeful 27 percent score shut down. 

It’s not that Warner Bros executives didn’t try. For one thing, they changed the name of the movie from its provocative English name to Special Task Force X (X特遣队).

That’s in addition to substantially changing the film from an earlier darker version written and directed by David Ayer, to a more lighthearted, and PG-13 rated, version.

It was probably always a long shot for Chinese censors to be OK with a film about a secret government agency that recruits imprisoned supervillains to save the world in exchange for clemency.

The film apparently needs to make USD 750 million, USD 800 million worldwide to break even, so not getting a showing in China matters. It may not be deadly, however, as the film is already starting to go great guns in other overseas markets.

Photo: filmtotaal.nl